2-year-old suffers fatal injuries four days after being seen by children’s services

Last year, Leah Mullinix brought her two-year-old son to a York hospital because his penis was painfully swollen with ulcers.

He had suffered the condition for four days, maybe longer, according to court records. Doctors wrote two prescriptions. But two days later, Mullinix still hadn’t filled them. Her son screamed in pain so often at a domestic violence shelter where they were living that staffers filed an abuse allegation with children services due to Mullinix’s “lack of care.”

Workers from York County Children, Youth and Families then forced Mullinix to fill the necessary prescriptions on Sept. 2. Shelter staff members had to show her how to put on the prescription cream and actually administered the prescriptions for her.

Three days later, Mullinix, 22, was supposed to appear in court for a custody hearing. Her sister filed for emergency custody of Dante Mullinix, believing him to be neglected and in danger. But Leah Mullinix didn’t show up in Adams County court and the hearing was postponed one month.

Dante wouldn’t live that long.

The next day, he fell unconscious and never woke up. He had a subdural hematoma, broken ribs, a lacerated liver and pancreas and bruises and marks on his neck and the rest of his body in various stages of healing, according to a child services report.

Dante died Sept. 14, one week before his third birthday, as a result of abuse.

A male friend of Leah Mullinix who was with Dante when he fell unconscious has been charged with homicide. Prosecutors allege Tyree Bowie, 40, caused the injuries when he babysat for Dante for two hours while she went to a hospital for treatment of a migraine. Bowie said he fed the boy animal crackers and the boy stopped breathing. Dante’s aunt and others close to the family believe he is innocent.

Bowie’s attorney, Farley Holt, said Bowie had known Leah for 20 days and recognized she needed help. Holt said he would not only be able to prove Bowie’s innocence but also prove who really caused Dante’s injuries.

Police charged Mullinix with felony child endangerment related to the delay in treating her son’s genitals. She spent three weeks in jail and appeared in court Thursday where it was revealed she is pregnant again. She waived her preliminary hearing and was released on unsecured bail.

The case is the latest example of an apparent breakdown in the child protective system in Pennsylvania.

In 2014, 9-year-old Jarrod Tutko died weighing 16.9 pounds nine months after a social worker visited the home and recommended to terminate services. No action was taken the next month when hospital workers called ChildLine to report concerns about Tutko’s sister, who was admitted into a hospital in a dirty, unkempt condition and her parents didn’t visit her.

The cracks remain exposed and are actually more like craters, said Sarah Mullinix, who filed a complaint through child services and was trying to gain custody of her nephew, who had grown up in her home.

When Leah lived with Sarah, Children and Youth Services already were involved with Dante, Sarah said.

A state Department of Human Services spokesman confirmed that Adams County children services provided an in-home assessment in May 2017 when Dante was a baby and provided services through October 2017. The agency did another assessment in March 2018.

But the sisters had a falling out last year and Leah and Dante moved out in June, with Leah cutting off contact with nearly all relatives. Leah had been living in her car with Dante, then in various motel rooms and at two different shelters.

After Leah moved out of Sarah’s home, she did not continue with services that were being provided by an early intervention community group, Sarah said, because a therapist showed up at Sarah’s home asking where Leah and Dante were. Sarah said she called police to check Dante’s welfare, filed a neglect report through a therapist who visited her child and talked to an after-hours CYS worker who told her she could file for emergency custody.

In the months before Dante died, Leah had taken him to a hospital in York more a dozen times for various ailments, Sarah said. She now wonders why none of the medical providers picked up on bruises and signs of neglect.

“I tried to save him,” Sarah said. “And it didn’t work out. There is a problem with children services. There are programs set up to help children and give them a voice, but they didn’t do that with Dante. What do you do when multiple people are reporting a child is hurt and no one does anything?”

The fact that hospitals, a domestic violence shelter and child service workers all interacted with Dante in the days before his fatal injuries erodes the public’s confidence in the state’s protection systems, said Cathleen Palm, founder of the Center for Children's Justice, a non-profit in Pennsylvania.

In many child abuse deaths, like in Dante’s case, the child was not “off the radar,” Palm said.

“It is so darn frustrating and unacceptable,” she said “Pennsylvania still lacks a sense of urgency about these children. We treat the critical incidences affecting young children as anomalies and yet are they? Or are they happening in every county across the Commonwealth and we are just not sufficiently connecting the dots?”

While there is a criminal case unfolding in regards to Dante’s death, “ we can’t nor should we overlook that he was known to a number of systems – health care, child welfare, domestic violence,” Palm said. “It is essential that there be some independent review of all the systems he interacted with and what those interactions entailed toward not just answering critical questions about his life and death, but ultimately toward protecting the collective community of children living in Pennsylvania.”

The York County Children, Youth and Families agencies has opened a review of Dante’s death, as required under a Pennsylvania law, known as Act 33. Palm was instrumental in getting Act 33 passed.

The review will result in an Act 33 report that must include statutory and regulatory compliance by the county's youth and children agency, the state’s findings about the incident and any recommendations "for reducing the likelihood of future child fatalities and near-fatalities resulting from child abuse."

The report is supposed to be made public within six months of a fatality, or near-fatality, but prosecutors can request that a report be kept secret during criminal investigations. The prosecutor asked for Dante’s report to be kept secret once it is completed.

Colin Day, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Human Services department, said he could not comment on whether York County child services workers were aware of the prior CYS referrals in Adams County. It’s also unclear if York County knew about the Adams County emergency custody hearing and the fact Leah Mullinix didn’t show up for it.

Getting everyone on the same page is critical if Pennsylvania wants to reduce child abuse and deaths, advocates say.

“I feel like everyone is trying to sweep Dante under the rug,” Sarah Mullinix said. “Why wasn’t he good enough to be saved?”